Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Information Processing Science

curricula recommendations, which the audit team sees as a strength. The last major curriculum reform was implemented seven years ago and small changes have been made on a continuous basis. A larger reform is currently ongoing.

The close co-operation with working-life characterises the culture of the programme and the links between the programme and working-life are exceptionally strong. Most of the teachers have working experience in industry or research organisations. Human-centric and multidisciplinary approach of the degree programme is a strength that also enhances employability of students.

An international learning environment prepares graduates to multicultural working-life. While the long cycles of curriculum planning can cause challenges in responding to the developments in the field, based on employability statistics and the interviews, the curriculum seems to be meeting labour market needs.

Research units behind the programme constantly have research projects with industry, which enhances the utilisation of research results. However, the audit team sees potential in involving more students in ongoing research projects, and in more systematic integration of research results into the curriculum work.

Lifelong learning is built in to the degree programme. During the interviews, the external stakeholders stressed the importance of general abilities over specific needs, and were positive about graduate access to continuous professional development. The audit team sees this as very important, especially because of the fast changing skill needs of the field. However, the university would be advised to discuss lifelong learning requirements directly with the students, as they might wish for even closer alignment with technical trends in industry.

Quality management related to the implementation of educational provision

The overall planning of implementation is done using the resource matrix. The responsible teachers have significant freedom to make choices on learning and assessment methods at the course-level. Based on the interviews and the self-evaluation, there is a need to enhance collaborative and participatory curriculum development work in the programme. One action already taken by the programme is compiling module groups of courses. The degree programme has also recognised a need to better coordinate the learning and assessment methods in order to coordinate the workload during semesters. The audit team recommends that the process by which students receive feedback about their learning is better systematised, because based on the interviews, variations exist between teachers.

Study counselling and small group tutoring are seen as significant tools for enhancing students’

learning and well-being. A teacher and a peer tutor are nominated for each new student following the university’s practice which provides individual support for students and their individual study plans.

The programme is, however, one of the weakest at the university in terms of the share of students completing 55 credits per year. The interviews revealed that the programme management has analysed the reasons behind the slow study progress. Challenges have been identified, including

problems in recruitment, study motivation and skills, as well as managing teaching and support services. The programme has started to address these challenges, and as a result the median of the first-year students’ progression has increased from 43 ECTS in 2014–15 to 46 ECTS in 2016. The most visible change was in the lower quartile: from 27 ECTS to 34 ECTS. Improvement is still slow, and the audit team strongly encourages the programme to seek new measures to improve study progress. For example, based on the interviews, there is a need to systematically assess the workload of courses in order to ensure that overload of course contents does not prohibit study progress.

A large proportion of degree programme students already have working-life experience, and also work alongside their studies. The team recommends taking into better account the heterogeneity of the student population regarding their previous studies, and their individual work and private life situations, when planning and implementing the courses. It would be important to improve the processes for recognising and acknowledging prior learning and communicating this to students. Based on the interviews, the recognition procedures are not as straight-forward or well-known as they should be.

Challenges in attracting enough motivated students pose serious risks for the programme. Several actions have been taken to tackle the problem, but in the audit team’s opinion more are needed.

Stronger branding and marketing of the programme is needed nationally and to select target groups internationally. For example, the good practices that the programme has in industry co-operation could be made more visible in marketing and branding.

Student feedback and analysis of the performance-related quantitative indicators are key evaluation methods for the programme. Course accomplishments are used to predict the share of students getting 55 credits a year, the graduation rate and total studying time. There is a need to develop the information systems further in order to better monitor individual student progress in relation to study goals during the academic year. Feedback from students is collected from courses through the university-level system, during Feedback Days twice a year, through the Finnish Bachelor’s Graduate Survey as well as through occasional interviews. In the interviews, the team received various examples of improvements made following student feedback. Feedback utilisation could still be strengthened by beginning to use also the open-ended questions of the Finnish Bachelor’s Graduate Survey.

Participation in quality work

Staff, students and external stakeholders participate actively in the quality work in the degree programme. All the stakeholder groups have also been involved in the ongoing major curriculum reform. The quality work leans strongly on the Programme Director. Officially, 50% of the Programme Director’s working time is reserved for this role, but in practice the responsibilities do not easily fit into that. However, as discussed also in Chapters 4.3 and 5.2, this is a common challenge within the new organisational model.

Teachers are responsible for collecting and analysing the course feedback, and for developing their own courses. The Feedback Days are a key forum where the development needs of the courses and programme as a whole are discussed with the staff and students, which the audit team notes as good practice. One third of the teachers in the programme are non-Finnish. Despite this, key documents related to planning, implementation and development of education are mostly available only in Finnish. The audit team encourages the programme to develop the documentation and ways of operation to enable full participation of non-Finnish members of staff in quality work.

Students are represented in the decision-making and preparatory committees of the programme and student input to quality work is strong through the feedback practices. Co-operation with the student guild is active. For example, there are joint efforts to develop recruitment through developing social media presence, web pages and marketing material of the degree programme.

Oulu Innovation Alliance is an important regional network with which Information Processing Science collaborates, thereby bringing considerable benefit to the area through rapid growth of the technology sector. External stakeholders are actively involved in developing the programme.

Company representatives visit as guest lecturers and case studies from industry are often used in teaching Both the Bachelor’s and Master’s programme have capstone projects embracing real-life topics; the Master’s thesis is often conducted within a company. Co-operation with working-life functions well, but to a large extent it is based upon the well-established individual networks that staff have built up themselves. Developing deeper co-operation and employer feedback as part of the operating principles and structure would facilitate more systematic processes and reduce the risk of losing important networks when people move on.